Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 21

What can I do better? | Michael Tomasky

Well friends, the time has come to say au revoir for now. Wednesday, i.e. tomorrow, I am off to Puerto Rico for a week. Any of you ever been? We're staying just outside San Juan. Let me know if you have ideas and suggestions. Remember, there's a baby involved.

This is serious vacationing, so no blog posts unless something really huge and cataclysmic happens, like Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark retools and gets good reviews.

Did you see how it was savaged by every Broadway critic in the country, pretty much? Julie Taymor, what's happened? And U2? The most expensive musical ever produced looks like it's going to shutter in a hurry, I guess (although somehow or other, it has already made 66 preview performances even though it just "debuted" Monday night).

One critic liked it:

...this morning on his radio show, The Glenn Beck Program, he started in very passionately on a topic that we've rarely heard him be passionate about before: the theater. Specifically, Broadway's new musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which has been berdevilled with injuries and other problems during its previews. The somewhat surprising part? Beck absolutely loved the show, which has been largely panned by early reviewers. (Technically, no official reviews of Spider-Man are supposed to appear until the show's official opening, which has been moved back twice but is currently slated for Feb. 7.) "This is better than Wicked!" Beck said, referencing the much-lauded Broadway show that was an instant success when it debuted in 2003. "This is much better than Wicked."

Isn't that sweet?

But I really want to end on Bill O'Reilly. Did you notice that in his interview with Obama, he asked: what can I do better? Obama was way too polite, of course, but it was an interesting question.

So I leave you with that thought. What can I do better? I'm actually being serious, kind of.

And hey, wait a minute. While we're at it: what can you do better? What can ErskineColdwell do better? The possibilities are endless really. I suggest a week's worth of penance on the comment thread of this very post. Let's all come up with at least one shortcoming: one comment we posted that we'd like to take back. one intemperate remark we should have sat on for a day, one cross word whose ill-advised escape we permitted.

I'll start. I think I've been going too soft lately on Sarah Palin. Ha. Okay. I'm going to cut back, a little, on the haughty and nasty adjectives. At least for a week. Cheerio.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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The Super Bowl and supersized excess | Michael Tomasky

If you wanted a teachable moment on the concentration of wealth in American society, the Super Bowl supplied it

What a scorcher of a piece in Tuesday's Washington Post by sports columnist Sally Jenkins on the out-of-hand bacchanalia of the modern-day Super Bowl experience, and the larger question of the deep reach of the NFL into the financial coffers of straitened states and cities and into the wallets of taxpayers. A real five-alarmer. There's much to quote. Let's start with this:

"Everything you need to know about the future of the NFL could be seen in the gloriously decadent stadium that hosted this Super Bowl. As NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell pointed out, 'Quite frankly, that's our stage.' It was the cleanest, safest, nicest stadium anyone has ever visited. It was also the most extravagant and economically stratified. It cost double what Jerry Jones said it would, and taxpayers financed about a quarter of it, yet its innermost marble interiors are totally inaccessible to the average fan.

"A tipping point was reached with this Super Bowl, for me. It was the screwed-over anger of those 1,250 people without seats that did it. Those travel-weary, cash-whipped fans paid small fortunes to go to the game, only to discover their stubs were no good, because fire marshals declared some sections unsafe. All of a sudden, the whole thing seemed offensive. It was just too much.

"For absurdity, how about those four Navy F-18s flying over the stadium – with its retractable roof closed? Everybody inside could only see the planes on the stadium's video screens. It was strictly a two-second beauty shot. Know what it cost taxpayers? I'll tell you: $450,000. (The Navy justifies the expense by saying it's good for recruiting.)"

That F-18 thing is really like something out of Honecker's East Germany, is it not? The power of the state on carefully orchestrated video-screen display, turning everyone in the crowd for those few seconds into captive Winston Smiths.

Here's more, in regard to Cowboys Stadium:

"It's the shiny new toy in the league. New stadiums are such a priority for owners that it's a critical piece of the labour negotiations taking place with the players' union. A major reason owners resent the 60% cut of revenue that goes to players is because it's not easy to finance stadium projects. They want a restructured agreement so 'we can make the kinds of investments that grow this game,' Goodell says, bemoaning the fact that no new construction has started since 2006.

"But how much growth does the league need? It already generates an estimated $8bn, and owners get the first $1bn off the top. If you really love the NFL – and I do -–you have to wonder if the billionising of the league is really good for it. The average cost of attending a game for a family of four is $412.64. At Cowboys Stadium, it's a staggering $758.58. That's what the league calls growth."

What percentage of an average family's annual entertainment budget is that? Rather hefty. But my question is largely irrelevant, because average families, who live on $52,000 a year, aren't going to Cowboys games. Maybe once a decade. And that's if they can score tickets. Regular people who don't have connections typically have to go to ticket-selling websites, where tickets usually cost a little more.

Then, she really puts the hammer down:

"But in the end, this Super Bowl taught me a lesson: luxury can actually be debasing. The last great building binge in the NFL was from 1995 through 2003, when 21 stadiums were built or refurbished in order to create more luxury boxes, at cost of $6.4bn. Know how much of that the public paid for? $4.4bn. Why are we giving 32 rich guys that kind of money, just to prey on us at the box office and concessions? The Dallas deal should be the last of its kind.

When an owner grows tired of a facility and leaves, guess who picks up the tab? New Jersey still owes $110m on the old Meadowlands home of the New York Giants and Jets, and when both teams moved to their new $1.6bn, privately financed stadium, they got a huge tax break. According to the Wall Street Journal, under their old agreement they paid $20m a year in tax revenues; now they will pay only about $6m a year. Know what New Jersey's deficit is? I'll tell you: $36bn."

How do multibillion-dollar corporations manage to get their tax bills reduced by more than two-thirds? I didn't read the Journal article, but I expect the answer is pretty much the same way the wealthiest Americans got their federal tax rates slashed in half in the last 30 years. It's trickledown, supersized.

British friends, I reckon this kind of thing is headed your way, if it hasn't arrived already. I've been to one British pitch in my life, White Hart Lane (I was there on that infamous day in 1996 when Mark Bosnich made a Nazi salute to mock Jurgen Klinsmann). I loved the place. Now, for all I know, current Spurs ownership wants new digs. But if this were the NFL, there is no possible, imaginable, conceivable way that an NFL team would use such a facility. They'd long since have ransomed the good people of Tottenham for millions.

I doubt it can be as bad over there as it is here, though. And naturally, it's worst in Texas, where they have to do everything on an epic scale and there is very little countervailing civic pressure, and in New York, where a half-million dollars buys you a tiny little studio apartment.

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And now, Democrats (yes, Democrats) against the healthcare mandate | Michael Tomasky

Looks like some Senate 'blue dogs' are off the leash. It'll be a job to housetrain them again for 2012

Politico brings the news that four moderate Senate Democrats from red states who will face their voters in 2012 are looking for ways to "roll back" the individual mandate:

"They haven't decided whether to propose legislation, but any effort by moderate Democrats that takes aim at the individual mandate could embarrass Obama and embolden Republicans who are still manoeuvring to take down the healthcare law.

"And it's not just healthcare. The senators are prepared to break with the White House on a wide range of issues: embracing deeper spending cuts, scaling back business regulations and overhauling environmental rules. The moderates most likely to buck their party include Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana – all of whom are up for reelection in 2012 and represent states Obama lost in 2008.

"The goal is to lay down a record of bipartisan compromises with Republicans, but it could also put Obama at odds with key centrists, right at the moment the president himself is looking to forge a more centrist path […]

"Nelson, who faces a tough road to win a third term next year, asked the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office to outline alternatives to the mandate, potentially by bringing large numbers of people into insurance coverage through open and closed enrollment periods. He may offer legislation once the congressional scorekeepers report back to him."

Well, there are alternatives to the individual mandate as currently structured, and they're called: more robust public exchanges, the public option, and single-payer healthcare. Something tells me this isn't what these folks have in mind.

As the article goes on to note, these Democrats' overtures to Senate Republicans to try to work together on changing these provisions of the law are not likely to be met with flowers and bells. In an election year (2012) in which Democrats have to defend 23 Senate seats, compared to only 11 for the GOP, what on earth would motivate the Republicans to give moderate Democrats in red states political cover?

Your Democratic party at work. A beautiful thing to see, eh?

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More on Frank Wisner and Patton Boggs | Michael Tomasky

More details on Wisner's possible conflict of interest, but it's the least of the challenges facing the Obama administration

As I indicated yesterday, the idea that just because diplomat Frank Wisner worked for the Patton Boggs law firm, that didn't necessarily mean that he was personally involved in working on matters related to Egypt. Now comes this from Justin Elliott in Salon:

"The law firm of Frank Wisner, who was the Obama administration's special envoy to Egpyt last week, is denying that Wisner ever worked for the Egyptian government, which has been a client of the firm, Patton Boggs.

"The denial comes after journalist Robert Fisk, writing in the UK Independent, accused Wisner of a conflict of interest because Patton Boggs has, according to its website, worked for the 'the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government's behalf in Europe and the US.'

"But Ed Newberry, managing partner at Patton Boggs, told Salon today that the firm 'represented the Egyptian government in the past – in the mid 1990s'. He said the firm also handled 'a very small legal matter' for the Egyptian embassy in Washington last year, but that Wisner did not work on that case. Newberry said that matter generated fees of less than $10,000.

Just thought you would want to know. Wisner still went off-message, but evidently for his own reasons.

Meanwhile, we have entered the second phase of this revolution, at least from a US perspective, in which Washington now has no choice but to get deeply involved in pressing for reform that may or may not happen under Omar Suleiman. From the New York Times:

"Administration officials say that in recent days, Vice President Joseph R Biden Jr – who has a long relationship with Mr Suleiman from his days on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – has been pressing Mr Suleiman for a clear road map of democratic reforms, linked to a timetable.

"But among the protesters and opposition groups in Egypt, there is deep scepticism that Washington is demanding enough of Mr Suleiman.

"The administration sought amendments to the Egyptian constitution to legalise political parties, termination of one-party rule, and the end of extralegal efforts to lock up government opponents and regulate the media. But much of the opposition considers the constitution fatally flawed, and is calling for an entirely new document on which to base a more democratic Egypt.

"Similarly, a meeting with opposition groups on Sunday led by Mr Suleiman was seen by many Egyptian activists as nothing more than political theatre that yielded no concrete steps toward reform. In a statement afterward – characterised by opposition figures as propaganda – Mr Suleiman offered some of what the administration sought, but left himself a lot of wiggle room."

This is going to be awfully difficult.

EgyptObama administrationUnited StatesMiddle EastUS foreign policyHosni MubarakMichael Tomasky
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Frank Wisner and Hosni Mubarak | Michael Tomasky

Bookfan wondered:

Any reaction from you on the US decision to engage former Ambassador Frank Wisner, who is a mover & shaker in the M.E. and who is a lead attorney at the law firm Patton Boggs, which has links with the Mubarak regime and is involved in major Egyptian contracts (multi million) / privatisation? Wasn't it a touch hasty to appoint Wisner as the US Envoy to Egypt of Hillary Clinton and President Obama? The man is tainted and cannot have been properly vetted. Big big mistake.

Obviously, Wisner's comment Saturday, in which he said he thought Mubarak should stay, was a whopper. A terrible misjudgment and a surprising one on the part of a man with his reputation and 40 years of diplomatic experience.

The obvious question then becomes, did he say it because of the Patton Boggs situation? People will want to jump to that conclusion. We can't really know. Having now read Robert Fiske's piece that started this, if you read it closely we don't know definitively, which is not a knock on Fiske necessarily because such a thing is hard to prove, if true.

Patton Boggs is a massive firm with 600 attorneys spread across nine locations. It represents 200 international clients from more than 70 countries. Did Wisner work directly on the Egypt account? If so, problem. At the other far end of the spectrum, he might not even have known the firm represented Egyptians interests. Don't laugh. He's not a managing partner. He's just an "adviser," whatever that is, exactly. Now one would think that he knew, but one would think a lot of things that don't turn out to be true.

In my reporting years in New York, I pursued my share of conflict-of-interest stories. I often found that they usually didn't pan out exactly the way I'd hoped. I remember very clearly wanting to tie one big-shot conservative money guy to the Colombian army, which seemed a sexy angle. But it turned out that the guy honestly had nothing to do with that portfolio.

The other thing is, there's nothing per se shady about representing Egypt's interests before Congress. Yes, it's a nasty regime, but representation of its interests could just involve development projects that most people would think were a fine idea for a developing country, or a change in visa policy of some sort. I doubt very much that Patton was lobbying Congress in behalf of Mubarak's right to throw political enemies in jail.

And yes, I would take the same posture with regard to a Republican administration. You didn't see banging on about Dick Cheney and Halliburton. Whether a Halliburton subsidiary might have done business in Saddam's Iraq was an interesting question, but not to me dispositive of anything in particular. The corporate-financial-political world is so sophisticated today and has everything so wired that they know exactly how to keep it all legal. Remember, trading derivatives, which nearly ruined the world, was perfectly legal.

These cases come down to a person's integrity. I don't know Wisner's, so I can't really say. It made sense to send him because he's known Mubarak for ages. But maybe it wasn't properly vetted. In any case, he messed up Saturday, and I would imagine he's done with this assignment.

Egypt-related, apropos nothing: It is my naive dream that next week, say, Mubarak will say something like: You know, I get it now. I do want to stay until September, but I want to use the time between now and then to open this society up and lead the change in the Arab world. I will pass a bill of rights guaranteeing basic freedoms, open up the press, raise the status of women, and show the world that it should invest in an open Arab society so that we can find suitable work for all these engineers and PhD's driving taxis.

He'd go down in history as one of the great heroes of our time. Hey, I said it was naive.

EgyptHosni MubarakUS foreign policyMichael Tomasky
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Christina Aguilera and the Star Spangled Banner | Michael Tomasky

Some of you have already weighed in on Christina Aguilera's rather sad performance last night. She forgot the lyrics in the second verse. It comes at about :50 into the video. More offensive to me than even that was all this modern-day pseudo-scat singing going on.

Some context. Jazzed-up renditions of the national anthem go back, at least as far as I know, to that most lamentable of decades (to traditionalists - back me up here conservatives), the 60s. I carry dim but nevertheless insistent memories of hearing newfangled performances of the song by Aretha Franklin and Jose Feliciano in the late 60s. One of them, Franklin I think, was signing at a Democratic convention, either in 1968 or 1972. Any of you remember either of those?

The worst rendition of the song I ever heard was at the Republican straw poll in Ames, Iowa in 1999. This was the event made semi-famous by presidential candidate Alan Keyes, who kept speaking after his microphone was turned off and looked like a ridiculous little fulminating puppet up there.

Anyway, the version sung there, by a local woman I think, was a canned and Disneyfied version, complete with dramatic key changes, rising Muzak strings and even the second and maybe even the third verse. It went on for about six minutes.

Now, I think our Christina has a great set of pipes. That recent Scorsese movie about the Stones? Her duet with Mick on "Live With Me" was great. She was the highlight of the whole thing. So I'm not going to get all high-dudgeony about her.

But this tic in modern singing. She took the word "light" as in "by the dawn's early light" and contorted it into four or five notes. It's one note. And "wave," as in "o say does that star spangled banner yet wave," is written as two notes, and she turned it into about 14.

This has been called American Idol's contribution to the culture. I think Whitney Houston started it. Whichever, it's really horrible. Me, I prefer choral performances of the song. Or instrumental performances by marching bands. The harmonies, whether vocal or instrumental, can be very rich and complex, and it's much more stirring that way. But God forbid Fox not pounce on an opportunity to feature a pop star.

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Obama and Bill O'Reilly | Michael Tomasky

Did you (Americans) watch the Bill O'Reilly interview of the president yesterday before the big game? You can watch here. Politico's takeaway:

The widely-anticipated sit-down was a transactional draw for both men: No one embarrassed themselves. O'Reilly scored a huge live interview. And Obama had access to the biggest TV audience of the year on a network he's often warred with.

That's about right I suppose. Billo kept interrupting him, urging Obama to get to the point and answer the question. This could be seen as rude and blustery, and maybe it was. Interviewers don't do that to presidents, no matter who is interviewing whom, no matter the ideological tensions involved. I'm sure Dan Rather never did that to Ronald Reagan.

But somehow I wasn't bothered by it. Like almost all politicians, Obama does take a long time to get to the point, if indeed he gets to it at all. O'Reilly kept trying to get Obama to say certain things that he wasn't ever going to say: that Mubarak should go now, that Obama was explicitly against the Muslim Brotherhood taking control (which he won't say because that might just whip up local sentiment in support of them), and that he and his people are preparing for the day the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate (which is of course true but is the kind of thing presidents don't admit to outright).

In Super Bowl-presidential interview tradition, which I think Bill Clinton started, the interview took an obligatory detour into light personal matters - the best thing about being president, the worst thing; why so many people hate him, an exchange that wasn't as interesting as that sounds; and obviously his prediction for the game. I thought Obama probably came across pretty well by showing that he was aware that the Steelers' starting center was injured and that might be a factor, and arguably, it did end up being a factor.

The normal Fox News Channel audience is a couple million people who despise Obama. The audience for this, on the Fox broadcast channel, was arguably 100 million people (we'll know soon I guess) who are all over the lot politically. So while I'm sure Obama was annoyed at having to do this - he was boxed into it by virtue of the fact that Fox was broadcasting yesterday's game, and given the way Super Bowl rotates among the major networks, he'll have to do it one more if he serves two terms - he probably got what he wanted out of it. No actual news, stayed calm and came across as a regular guy who wants to watch a football game.

As for the game itself, it was oddly unexciting, even though close. For those of you who don't know, Green Bay won, 31-25. My prediction was Green Bay 30-28. Not bad.

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Does Ben Roethlisberger represent the NFL? | Michael Tomasky

Ben Wallace-Wells has an interesting piece at TNR about Ben Roethlisberger and the NFL and the question of image. He recounts a story involving NFL commissioner Roger Goodell from Sports Illustrated:

The lug in question was Ben Roethlisberger, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, who had been accused of rape for the second time in a year, in this instance by a 20-year-old college student in Georgia. Arming himself for the conversation, Goodell had talked to two dozen other players, including other Steelers. "Not one, not a single player, went to his defense," Goodell told Sports Illustrated. The vanity of the quarterback is that he is such a beloved leader that his teammates forgive even his transgressions.

Big Ben, as they call him, is definitely a thug and a cad. From later down in the piece:

One evening last March, this small-town icon was in a Milledgeville, Georgia, bar to celebrate his twenty-eighth birthday. He walked up to a young woman with whom he'd been flirting ("all my bitches, take some shots!") with his penis hanging out of his pants, according to the handwritten account she gave police later that night, and led her into a bar bathroom where he raped her. Her friends tried to get into the bathroom, but Roethlisberger's private security team barred the door. When she finally left, she went outside with her friends, searched for the first police car she could find, and told the officer she'd been raped. Charges were eventually dropped, after the victim declined to pursue the case, but the moral contours of the situation, from the court documents, seem as stark as those that condemned Mike Tyson—and sent him to prison.

Of course we have only the woman's word, but in any case he's not exactly a prince.

Wallace-Wells weaves this into a larger narrative about "caveman" behavior in the league, and certainly with regard to such a violent game it's an easy charge to make. And for those of you who don't know, the question of "cheap shot" tackles and needlessly aggressive hits (helmet-to-helmet, say) has been under sharp scrutiny this year.

There's no question that the league has a very male cover-up culture. That Roethlisberger received only a four game suspension shocked me. He should have been suspended for the entire season, including post-season play. A full year in solitary. Others would get that message for sure.

All that said, I'm just not sure there's a sociopath problem in the NFL any greater than in any other high-end line of work. There are probably as many rapists per capita among Wall Streeters or corporate leaders (that is, men with money and power, like pro football players) as among NFL players. My guess would be more, in fact. And NFL players are widely known for their charitable work with disabled children and what have you in the cities where they play. And finally, a high percentage of them are quite religious.

There are a lot of things about NFL that bug me. It's kind of a - and I used this word extremely loosely and figuratively, okay? - neo-fascist organization. It demands complete control over everything it touches. There was a story a couple of years ago that the league forced sideline photographers to wear a new kind of vest (to identify themselves as media), and the level of detail was just insane. If neo-fascist is too strong for you, then let's just say it's very 1984.

But as for the players, I maintain continually that the vast majority of them are surprisingly decent people. The Steelers' quarterback ain't one of them. Go Packers! If you watched my video, you know that I predicted Green Bay 30-28, but that was mostly because I can't possibly be comfortable predicting that Roethlisberger will win another Super Bowl, although unfortunately I suspect he might.

What are your predictions? And what are you going to eat? I think I've settled on Italian sausages (turkey, to cut down on the fat) with broccoli rabe and provolone cheese and lots of fresh sauteed garlic on ciabatta bread. It's an oily and messy sandwich with the rapini tumbling out all over the place, and man is it delicious.

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Useful information on the Muslim Brotherhood | Michael Tomasky

I see we're having some to and fro about the Muslim Brotherhood, with the politically correct position being to downplay the threat they embody. I thought you would all be interested in this piece from Foreign Affairs by Carrie Roseksky Wickham, an Egypt-Middle East expert at Emory University.

She gives a calm explanation of what exactly the MB is these days and how it operates, and her conclusions seem to me realistic and neither too alarmist nor too at ease:

The Brotherhood knows from experience that the greater its role, the higher the risk of a violent crackdown -- as indicated by the harsh wave of repression that followed its strong showing in the 2005 parliamentary elections. Its immediate priority is to ensure that President Hosni Mubarak steps down and that the era of corruption and dictatorship associated with his rule comes to an end. To achieve that, the Brotherhood, along with other opposition groups, is backing El Baradei. The Brotherhood also knows that a smooth transition to a democratic system will require an interim government palatable to the military and the West, so it has indicated that it would not seek positions in the new government itself. The Brotherhood is too savvy, too pragmatic, and too cautious to squander its hard-earned reputation among Egyptians as a responsible political actor or invite the risk of a military coup by attempting to seize power on its own.

Still, it is unclear whether the group will continue to exercise pragmatic self-restraint down the road or whether its more progressive leaders will prevail. Such reformers may be most welcome among the other opposition groups when they draft a new constitution and establish the framework for new elections, but they do not necessarily speak for the group's senior leadership or the majority of its rank and file. It remains to be seen whether the Brotherhood as an organization -- not only individual members -- will accept a constitution that does not at least refer to sharia; respect the rights of all Egyptians to express their ideas and form parties; clarify its ambiguous positions on the rights of women and non-Muslims; develop concrete programs to address the nation's toughest social and economic problems; and apply the same pragmatism it has shown in the domestic arena to issues of foreign policy, including relations with Israel and the West.

It remains to be seen...She's an expert, and she doesn't know. Which means that I sure as hell don't know, and you sure as hell don't know either. So let's drop the certainty. Probably even the Muslim Brotherhood itself doesn't yet know what its posture will be.

I recommend reading this. Some of you took me as trafficking in MB hysteria this morning. I said I'm "far from sanguine," but that doesn't mean I am convinced they'll impose sharia in 10 minutes. I just think it's an open question. Still, as I wrote, they have to be included.

I'll try to stay off my high horse here, and you yours. Let it unfold. As much as we all want it to be Prague 1989, it could be Tehran 1979, or it could be something else entirely, and nobody knows.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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Friday quiz: liberte, egalite... | Michael Tomasky

I was a little disappointed in you folks last week, most of you anyway, because I really would have thought more people knew more about the great song standards. I really urge you – you're depriving yourselves of beauty. I also don't understand this antipathy to musicals. Sure, people don't break into song in real life. So what? Real life also doesn't include vampires, ghosts, time travel, journeys to other galaxies, hastily resolved happy endings, unbelievably hot members of the opposite (or shall I say one's preferred) sex throwing themselves at our feet, and a jillion other things that appear in movies all the time. I bet you don't turn your nose up at those. Whatever.

This week we take on a less esoteric subject, a very standard sort of Jeopardy! category kind of topic: the history of France. Glorious France! England's old foe. America's old friend. Incubator of so much that we treasure, and some stuff that sucks. Home base of liberty, equality and fraternity; of political terror; of empire and instability; of heavy cream and crisp Sancerres; you get the drift. I haven't been out and about in France much. Paris of course. Then I once went to a little town in Normandy called Etretat. Ever been? One of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, with the setting sun striking a multi-hued match on those chalky cliffs. Amazing. Also passed through Rouen on the way. The view of the cathedral from the train station was just like in the Monets.

What follows is mostly politics and culture and reflects of course that which your correspondent has read and studied over the years. The whole blog is like that, so why should this be any different? Let's get cracking

1.Marseilles is the oldest city in France, settled in about 600 BC by this people, who called it Massalia:
a. Romans
b. Ionian Greeks
c. Egyptians

2. About when did the Hundred Years' War between England and France take place, and who won?
a. From the early 1100's to the early 1200's; England
b. From the late 1100's to about 1300; France
c. From the mid-1300's to the mid-1400's; France

3. This dynasty began its rule in Navarre in the 1500's and extended its reach into Spain, Sicily, Naples and Parma; even today, the monarchs of Spain and Luxembourg are members of it:
a. The House of Bourbon
b. The House of Valois
c. The House of Orléans

4. When members of the Third Estate were locked out of a meeting of the Estates General in 1789, they took an oath "not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established." Where did they famously congregate to so pledge themselves?
a. The Champ de Mars
b. The Place de la Concorde
c. The King's tennis court at Versailles

5. Which of these revolutionary leaders was not one of the 12 members of the Committee of Public Safety, which carried out the Reign of Terror?
a. Danton
b. Saint-Just
c. Robespierre

6. Which French writer, declaring the emperor Napoleon III a traitor, left the country, refusing to return until the emperor had to leave the throne in 1870?
a. Stendahl
b. Victor Hugo
c. Alexandre Dumas

7. Who was Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy?
a. The likely actual perpetrator of the treasonous acts of which Alfred Dreyfus was accused
b. The army general who first registered the false accusations against Dreyfus
c. The "leftenant" in the French army who unearthed the evidence that would eventually exonerate Dreyfus

8. Match the artist to the movement with which he is most associated:
Eugene Delacroix
Gustave Courbet
Alfred Sisley
Georges Seurat

Impressionism
Post-impressionism
Romanticism
Realism

9. In 1938, he said: "Today, it is the turn of Czechoslovakia. Tomorrow, it will be the turn of Poland and Romania. When Germany has obtained the oil and wheat it needs, she will turn on the West. Certainly we must multiply our efforts to avoid war. But that will not be obtained unless Great Britain and France stick together, intervening in Prague for new concessions but declaring at the same time that they will safeguard the independence of Czechoslovakia. If, on the contrary, the Western Powers capitulate again, they will only precipitate the war they wish to avoid." And yet, pressed by Neville Chamberlain, he signed the Munich accord.
a. Aristide Briand
b. Edouard Daladier
c. Leon Blum

10. What was the symbol of the Free French, and to whom was its use intended as homage?
a. The fleur de lis; Charlemagne
b. An eagle on a wreath; Napoleon Bonaparte
c. The Cross of Lorraine; Jeanne d'Arc

11. When culture minister Andre Malraux tried to cut off the funding of his Cinémathèque Française in 1968, uproar ensued, with large-scale protests on the streets of Paris in the same year as the massive pitched street battles between students and police:
a. Daniel Cohn-Bendit
b. Henri Langlois
c. Guy Debord

12. Which French Republic are we now in, numerically, and whose presidential tenure has been the longest (so far) of this republic?
a. Fifth; Francois Mitterand
b. Fifth; Charles de Gaulle
c. Sixth; Jacques Chirac

That's a lot of history to cover in 12 questions, but I say if you did well on this, you've got a pretty decent sense of the place, especially if you're an ignorant American like me. Answers below.

Answers:
1-b; 2-c; 3-a; 4-c; 5-a; 6-b; 7-a; 8: Delacroix = Romanticism, Courbet = Realism, Sisley = Impressionism, Seurat = Post-impressionism; 9-b; 10-c; 11-b; 12-a.

Notes:
1. I felt that the –alia ending should be a tipoff of Greek provenance; you know, like Thalia.
2. Sorry you lost that one, Brits. I was pulling for you, really.
3. Should have been pretty easy.
4. You know the famous painting by David, I trust.
5. Danton was very much not one of the 12, so much so that they lopped off his noggin.
6. Not an easy one, unless you just happen to know it.
7. Good fake answers, thus, not so easy.
8. The only tricky one here to me is Seurat. To have said "pointillism" would have made it too easy, I thought. But this should have been process of elimination, as the other three weren't hard.
9. I didn't know until this morning that he said this. Amazing. And when he got home to Paris and was cheered by crowds, he scoffed to an aide: "the fools!"
10. You should know this from the scene in Casablanca, right, where the guy in Rick's Cafe acts like he's trying to sell Victor Laszlo a locket, and he opens it, and it shows the Cross of Lorraine, signaling that he's Free French. That said, I did come up with great fake answers here.
11. I once watched a great documentary about Langlois, which was this, I think. I highly recommend it. Highly admirable fellow.
12. Yup. Mitterand, 14 years. DeGaulle, 10.

How did you do? There's a lot I didn't get in here. A Bonaparte question. Sartre and Camus and DeBeauvoir. More art and literature. Food, for gosh sakes. Pierre Laval. Algeria. The Suez crisis. Edith Piaf. The Moulin Rouge. Anyway, let's hear how you did, and your feelings and thoughts on the subject. Oh, and sometime in the next two weeks, I will set up a fridayquiz gmail account and we'll get rolling on reader quizzes.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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